They also were the project managers and researchers in places like NRL and ARL, the premier research labs in the Navy and Army. Guiding weapon development along with the blue/green suits. They staffed DOE labs doing funding and research for things that went bump in the night, cleanup, energy development, etc.

PhD's are the psychologists on staff in the VA helping glue veterans back together. They're also the -ologists (immune, endocrine, ...) who work with the MD's to diagnose and treat people. They also review new drug proposals to make sure they're tested for safety and effectiveness.

There's probably some salted through the other departments doing things like agronomy, geology, ... Things that help food and energy production. There's more than you think in the various security agencies - people were surprised why the government was hiring for computational linguistics back in the 80's. They also handle funding for things that turned into that Net/Web thingie you're using to read this.

Is it useful to have these kind of people on the public purse? Depends on whether you think funding research, regulating drugs, weapon research and cleanup, treating patients, ... are important. They're cheaper than the corresponding private individuals would be if they were contractors or being paid externally.

https://delta.tudelft.nl/en/article/fewer-phd-positions-and-...

https://www.sciencelink.net/features/its-not-just-about-mone...

* It's low quality stuff that you buy everyday * It's not merely low quality stuff, but low quality stuff in astonishing quantity... * ... and among them, occasionally there are some high quality stuff. It might be a small ratio, but the base number is there.

It is no coincidence that these kinds of personality-based dictatorships often devolve into dysfunction as time goes on.

Economics on its own is probably not sufficient either. You probably also need widespread unionization, a Cordon Sanitaire, and probably German-style intelligence surveillance of the far-right too.

seems like it was made to fit a specific narrative...

> At most agencies, the most common reasons for departures were retirements and quitting. Although OPM classifies many of these as voluntary, outside forces including the fear of being fired, the lure of buyout offers, or a profound disagreement with Trump policies, likely influenced many decisions to leave.

So similar to most of the other federal agency reductions, around 5-10% were formally let go but the majority left voluntarily.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_bubble_in_the...

https://students.bowdoin.edu/bowdoin-review/features/death-b...

https://www.reddit.com/r/highereducation/comments/13rno6w/wh...

So, the government tends to employ PhDs at a substantially higher (~50%) rate than the public workforce.

Edit: Yeah, oops, people generally use public / private the other way around.

- "a net loss of 4224 STEM Ph.D.s"

Far less than the headline "10k"

- "departing Ph.D.s took with them a wealth of subject matter expertise and knowledge about how the agencies operate".

Whether such "expertise and knowledge" is worthwhile or exclusive to these Ph.D.s, or even useful at all, remains to be seen.

Every time I've seen a PhD enter a private organization they've gummed up the works and left only after bollixing things up. While possibly excellent for hard science research, PhDs can have a POV incompatible with solving problems quickly.

What this means is that even MORE than the usual STEM PhDs will be entering the private sector, possibly further gumming up the works, as bosses try to fit PnDs (round pegs) into private jobs (square holes).

Take Geoffrey Hinton and his students, for one example. Moved from the USA to Canada in the Regan era. Hinton (and Canada in general) saw an influx of otherwise USA-bound students from 2016 on. And it's just happening again.

I was a PhD student in deep learning ("AI") in the US from 2018 through 2022. The "Muslim ban" at the time saw so many students who had their eyes set on the United States look elsewhere. During the 2020 election cycle, a fellow PhD student of mine (I was the only English student in an all-Chinese lab) thought Trump would win the election, and expressed that as, "I am so so so so so sad". (Anyone who has tried expressing their feelings in a language new to them will recognize this pattern of using intensifiers like this.)

But the Project 2025 changes we saw were unique. In my perspective as a former academic, I don't think people outside academia generally appreciate the extent to which the reputation the United States had for research has been damaged.

/s

Would be interesting to see the age of these STEM or health fields employees. What if they were all over the age of 70? Would that still bother everyone?

Do you think this article was framed to cause outrage and frustration?

Because we don’t need to focus on getting people into government who we can trust to represent our interests as their prime duty. No, what we really want to focus on is finding MORE PEOPLE WITH DOCTORATES. Yes.